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We had a lovely chine of beef and other good things very complete and drank a great deal of wine, and her daughter played after dinner upon the virginals, and at night by lanthorn home again, and Mr.
Elizabeth frowned slightly, then said: "What exercises did she take when you were at the Court?" "Sometimes she hunted, your Majesty, and sometimes she played upon the virginals." "Did she play to effect?" "Reasonably, your noble Majesty." "You shall hear me play, and then speak truth upon us, for I have known none with so true a tongue since my father died."
He has burrowed in libraries and found unknown manuscripts like a savant, he has worked at misunderstood notations and found out a way of reading them like a cryptogrammatist, he has first found out how to restore and then how to make over again harpsichord, and virginals, and clavichord, and all those instruments which had become silent curiosities in museums.
None remembered that Dowlands was the name of Henry the Eight's favourite lute player, and there was nothing in the snug masonry to suggest an æstheticism of any kind. The dulcimers, lutes and virginals surprised the visitor coming in from the street, and he stayed his steps as he might on the threshold of a fairy land. The villas, of which Dowlands was one, were a builder's experiment.
Mrs Jane assented to this, and going to the virginals, called Jenny to come and sing. The half-hour passed rapidly, until the server, or waiter, came to say that supper was served in the hall, and the party sat down.
Being Sunday, of course she could not employ herself with needlework; and though she was fond of music, and was a fairly good performer on the virginals, she did not dare to make a noise.
He also writeth in his twelft booke, that in olde time they made many goodly workes of iuory or Elephants teeth: as tables, tressels, postes of houses, railes, lattesses for windowes, images of their gods, and diuers other things of iuory, both coloured, and vncoloured, and intermixt with sundry kindes of precious woods, as at this day are made certaine chaires, lutes, and virginals.
When they had seen it, they held up their hands and blessed themselves, and said, O what a man for love to his Master, and for denial to himself, was Abraham! After they had showed them all these things, Prudence took them into the dining-room, where stood a pair of excellent virginals; so she played upon them, and turned what she had showed them into this excellent song, saying
Now be advised by me, and take advantage of the humor of the queen. A good husbandman, as thou knowest, improves the sunshine to make hay. We must do likewise. It is the queen's habit to repair to her closet to play each day upon the virginals. This she doeth for the most part privately, but, as she plays markedly well, she is not ill pleased to have others hear her.
Especially did the discovery of the New World, the maritime struggle with Spain, the outburst of commerce and colonisation during the reigns of Elizabeth and James, help toward this good result. It was in vain for the Lord Oxford of the day, sneering at Raleigh's sudden elevation, to complain that as on the virginals, so in the State, "Jacks went up, and heads went down."
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